NLP | Venezuela and the BBC

Perhaps most shockingly of all the BBC reported the military coup against an elected government with massive popular support as a “return to democracy” and even sub-headed a section of one article as “Restoring Democracy”! One of the themes of the BBC’s reporting, which our research uncovered, was the way in which Chavez seems to come from nowhere, destabilising Venezuela (poverty, inequality and corruption barely get a mention as divisive phenomena), and attacking the “nation”. The coup was reported as a resolution of that division, and it was framed as a kind of national achievement, as if it was a people’s revolution. In complete ignorance of the fact that it was initiated by a corrupt oligarchy the coup was a “Venezuelan coup”, and in the aftermath the BBC would report on what “Venezuela needs”, as if 1. there is a unified interest and 2. people hadn’t already expressed their needs through elections. There was not a mention of the fact that an elected leader had been overthrown, and although in the aftermath it was noted that “the people” were involved in bringing him back to power, the suspicion of Chavez remained. Amazingly most of the reporting on the build-up to elections thereafter presumed Chavez would lose and insinuated that he lacked support.

(via Instapaper)